


geyser

by rizahawkaye



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Drunken Kissing, F/M, First Kiss, Forbidden Love, Kissing, Sloppy Makeouts, this is a fun one it's like heat 2.0, this is royai i promise u just have to trust me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-02
Updated: 2019-08-02
Packaged: 2020-07-29 01:03:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20073574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rizahawkaye/pseuds/rizahawkaye
Summary: Riza brings home a man who isn't Roy (but she has a good imagination).





	geyser

**Author's Note:**

> got this idea while i was drunk a few months ago, haha. not even kidding. it started off as a few sentences and somehow grew into this (:

Riza asked him his name.

“Damon,” he said. Or Damien, it was hard to tell over the chatter of too many people gathered in too small a space. And it didn’t matter, really, whether Riza heard him right or not. Names were a thing people had here, but not a thing anyone remembered. Here, it was a game: How many drinks until you forget you’ve been sitting next to a man named Damon? How many hours will it take before the letters start to blur in your mind and the man next to you melts away like an ice sculpture, their once distinctive features of dimples and scruffy beards going soft and falling away. Damien might have been his real name, but at twelve percent alcohol, Damon was who he became.

Damon took the bar stool next to Riza. He brought with him a powerful mixture of cologne and firewood. He wore casual brown slacks and a half-tucked plaid shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows. He said, “Is this seat taken?” as he took it.

Riza didn’t bother looking for Rebecca, who had been in the seat previously. Her friend was likely dancing or watching from afar. They came to these bars together but never went home together unless one or the other was hopelessly sick and/or wasted. Riza had never been either.

“No,” she said.

Then she asked him his name — Damon or Damien — and gave him hers. He said, “Can I buy you a drink, Riza?” with a pleasant tip of his smile. It quirked the left side of his upper lip just enough that a dimple appeared in the apple of his cheek. What a dirty trick.

Riza nodded her approval and sipped the last of her beer. 

“Do you want another one of those?” he said and pointed to her empty glass. There was still foam at the bottom, suctioned to the last remnants of Central’s finest beer – Royal Blue. Tap, of course, never bottle. “I can get you something else.” 

The implication was not lost on Riza. If she said yes, he’d order her something heavier — a forty percent, maybe, or a mixed drink. It wasn’t a deception on his part. He knew that she knew that it was a way of the bar. Drinks made you forget names, sure, but they also made you forget anything that might deter you from having sex with a stranger in a slimy bathroom, the stall walls thumping and creaking with your jerky, uncoordinated movements, or a tiny car, the windows fogging and leather seats going slick. Riza saw a flash of this man’s hand pulling on the body of her breast and she didn’t hate it, so she ordered another beer. Or rather, Damon ordered it for her. 

“So,” Damon said, handing a fresh glass to Riza, “what brings you here? Are you from Central?”

He had dark hair. It looked black in the low light but was probably brown. It fell into his eyes because it was unkempt, but it was a controlled kind of unkempt. Like Damon woke up in the morning and fussed with his hair until it met his criteria for the perfect level of unkempt. 

“I’m from out east,” Riza said. 

“A country girl,” Damon said. His comment was lighthearted, but Riza felt weight anyway. Her father’s property was not so conducive to traditional eastern life, especially after it had been opened up for a young boy from Central. The closest neighbors were a mile away on either side, and they had sheep and their yards always smelled like manure and the barns always mooed, but the Hawkeye house was a doll’s house. Antique furniture her mother bullied her father into buying for her; rugs that were once colorful and expensive but turned white and dusty the longer they sat abandoned; glossy wooden floors; a trough out front for dogs, not horses. And Roy had only made things more complicated, as if Riza wasn’t already balancing on her father’s eastern line and her mother’s Central one. Now, though, she felt as Central as anyone else. Acculturated to cars and their black fumes; to men in three-piece suits; to concrete instead of gravel; to alarms and not the far-off crowing of roosters.

“You could say that.”

“So, what is that you do? I’m a mechanic. I’ve worked on tractors and cars and a few radios when my nephews beg hard enough. It would be easier with alchemy, but I never had a talent for it, so I bought a tool kit, found a trade school, and now I’m happily employed at PC’s.” Damon took a modest swig of his liquor. His dark eyes watched Riza’s in earnest. She wondered what they’d look like when they warmed up. Honey brown, dark chocolate, silky black.

“I’m a first lieutenant in the military,” she said. 

Damon whistled low, his lips forming a neat ‘o’. “Impressive.”

His hands were fat and calloused. There was grime under his fingernails, though it was clear he’d tried to clean it out. Riza spied scars over the top of his hands. One stretched from the middle of his left dorsal to the tip of his index finger, stopping just before the nail bed. She touched it once. “Impressive,” she said. He grinned.

“I got my hand caught in a trap while hunting once,” he studied his own scar in the blue bar light, “and instinct got ahold of me before reason did, so I snatched my hand away and ended up making the injury worse than it would have been otherwise.”

Riza liked Damon. Not enough to date him or invite him to the office to meet the boys. (She rarely, if at all, liked someone that much.) And she definitely didn’t like him enough to introduce him to Roy. But she liked him enough to let him keep her company, and two beers and four different Damon-related stories later she asked if he’d take her home. He nearly choked on his drink. 

“Sure,” he said, “yeah, of course.” The implication was not lost on him.

Riza made sure to announce her departure to Rebecca, who had run into a friend from Central Command, some older woman with two-toned hair and frown lines long enough to touch her neck. The two of them were giggling over something when Riza approached, Damon hovered a ways away to smoke a cigarette. Rebecca laughed and said, “Found one already, Ri? I think that’s a record. You packing?” Which was Rebecca’s way of saying, _Don’t forget that you can murder him in self-defense, it’s completely legal and I’ll testify on your behalf. _

Riza tapped her thigh. “Yes, ma’am.” She left to meet Damon at the door.

They made it three blocks before Damon pulled over a little ahead of a street lamp. Light backlit the side of his face when he turned to her, one hand spreading over her thigh. Maybe it was a trick of the light, or maybe it was the alcohol, but he looked a lot like Roy. Messy hair parted over his ears, settled on his forehead. His face was rounder than it had been in the bar, the curve of his eyes more severe. His lips parted as he leaned over the small gap between them and kissed the skin beneath her jaw open-mouthed. 

His hand slid up, up, up until he found the slit in her skirt and the holster of her gun beneath it. His fingers curled back into his palm like he’d just found a snake’s burrow.

“Is this okay?” he said. The night was thick with heat. Overhead, Riza listened to the charge of thunderclouds. Wet pressed in on them, dampening the windows and the hood of the car. Her hair was already frizzing around the ring of her face. And Damon was so close. His hot breath hovered over her lips, his nose a hair’s width from touching hers. She felt like everything around her was suffocating her, yet she buried her fingers in the hair at the back of his head and guided his mouth to hers anyway.

The scent of firewood was stronger now that he was on her. It was all-encompassing. It was like he’d crawled out of a fire himself, wood chips burning on his shoulders, ash dusting the top of his head. Riza opened her mouth and she imagined she tasted the smell, the charred, smoky taste of sizzling firewood. He pressed his lips to hers and she caved, her head tipping back to let more of him in, craving something familiar, something known.

Except he didn’t taste like firewood. He tasted like the liquor he’d been drinking, spicy and bitter and dark. He was angled so that the bottom half of his body faced forward while the top half twisted toward Riza. He eventually let loose a frustrated grunt and hauled the lower half of his body away from the steering wheel and the pedals. He descended on Riza until her back was pressing hard into the passenger side door and his knee was worked all the way up between her legs. She sighed into his mouth when he made contact there, and the noise he made in return was desperate, impatient. He stopped kissing her and ran his tongue along the length of her bottom lip, and for a quarter of a second Riza pretended he wasn’t Damon. This wasn’t Damon. This was a man with fire on the tips of his fingers.

“How much farther until we get to your place?” He said, breaking Riza’s concentration. His voice was drenched in want. His scarred hands explored her blouse and that thin slit in her skirt, his fingers playing with the hem of her panties on her upper thigh. 

Riza was all at once confused about why they couldn’t have sex here, and worried that they might. “Another three blocks or so,” she said. He kissed her again, teeth mashing into teeth, and then withdrew to start the car. 

The engine revved and Damon pulled away, his hand still gripping the hill of Riza’s left thigh. And in three, maybe four minutes they’d made it to the curb directly below her apartment. The lights in the ceiling outside her unit were lit but faint; made fuzzy by the low-hanging clouds. Damon’s features fizzled in and out of focus again. He looked like Damon and then not like Damon. He looked like–

Riza went for the handle on the door. Damon peeled his hand off her thigh and asked, quite earnest, “Are you sure?”

How funny. There were few things Riza was ever unsure about. Riza was sure. That was her nature. She was sure she needed this, sure there was no other way. She didn’t play at this game, she won it. She was the reigning champion. She was adept at bringing people home. It was a practiced skill, one that came naturally but that she had to nurture, like her marksmanship. She was always sure.

“Yes.”

He grinned. “All right.”

The air felt sticky in Riza’s lungs. She exited the car, rounded the hood, and placed her hand on the rail, which was wet. She looked back at Damon and he didn’t seem to care how humid it was outside, past midnight, no rain to be seen only the ghostly crawl of dark clouds. He kept on her heels as he followed her up the creaking metal stairs to her apartment door: 280, the fourth door on the second floor on the right. 

Riza’s mind swirled back into the moment in the car when Damon’s face morphed into Roy’s. She hoped she could keep that image still in her mind, placing her superior in her apartment instead of Damon. It was a nifty trick, and at times one she thought might be unfair, but it was what she craved. Besides, no one ever complained when she whispered Roy’s name instead of theirs. No one ever complained at all.

“Hawkeye?” –Oh, that voice.

A man – that man – was standing at her door. He wore a familiar black greatcoat, slacks, a vest over a collared white shirt. He was as dark as the sky when he spotted Riza as she reached the top of the stairs, Damon’s hands on her hips. His eyes flashed with danger. Riza choked on the sticky nighttime air.

“Lieutenant Hawkeye,” he affirmed. His voice dug into Riza’s stomach. There were a thousand other places he could have been at this moment. A bar, his aunt’s, another person’s bed, his apartment, doing exactly what Riza was doing. But he was here at her apartment door, melted black eyes searching for composure but finding only searing jealousy. He looked like a volcano on its last leg, the change in weather coaxing it toward an explosion undoubtedly more disastrous than the catalyst itself.

“What are you doing here, sir?” There was more in that question — he knew she went out on Friday nights. He knew, he knew. 

Riza had stopped walking when she saw Roy, so Damon, being unhappy with his stalled position on the steps, squeezed past Riza. “This is your boss?” he said, and the question was so alarming — _This is your _boss — that Riza broke from Roy’s heated stare. 

“I was bringing these,” Roy said. He had files in his hand, manila envelopes stuffed stick. No doubt they were Edward’s and needed a few once-overs. No doubt Roy was hoping they could once-over them together, on her couch, her floor, her kitchen table… 

This is your _boss_. 

“Are you drunk, Lieutenant?” He was hoping and not hoping. Hoping because it meant he could hit Damon. Not hoping because it meant his lieutenant would have been taken advantage of. 

Roy Mustang was always losing a battle with himself.

“No, sir,” she said. She took the files from Roy and their skin touched just briefly, just enough for her to want more. He did that, she knew, on purpose.

“I’ll review them in the morning.”

Riza made to brush past Roy, but he said, “In the morning, Lieutenant?” and she paused. She gave him a withering look, a pleading, ‘don’t’. He ignored her like the terrible, horrible, awful, dreadfully annoying man that he was. 

“May I have a moment alone with you, Lieutenant?”

The request sounded benign enough to the ears of someone like Damon, but Riza caught the sultry shift of Roy’s tone. This, she reasoned, would never improve. This ‘situation’, as she called it. It was a blight on her day-to-day, the way the colonel weakened her very carefully prepared resolve. He took barrels of acid to it.

“I can give you guys a minute,” Damon said. Dear, sweet, stupid Damon. Riza’s glare narrowed and narrowed as Roy’s smirk grew and grew. The jealousy Riza first saw simmering in his features had already evaporated, leaving nothing but his relentless teasing behind. She felt oddly embarrassed, like he’d caught her in her musings on the stairs. Or like he’d been in her mind back in that car, kissing Damon but not thinking of Damon. Her cheeks went pink like traitors. 

Riza spun on her heel and unlocked her apartment door despite herself; let Damon in to see an excited Hayate despite herself; excused herself from Damon despite herself; and then shut the door again and faced her superior head-on, despite herself.

Roy’s hair didn’t frizz in humidity. It didn’t curl or stick. It laid out perfectly over his forehead, his ears and his nape. His face never reddened in the heat, and if he sweat it was so slight that Riza had a hard time seeing it even with her special, super-powered eyes. He looked delightful in anything he wore, dress suits or uniform or pajamas or trash bag. There were few people Riza knew could manage such a feat as to look stupidly handsome while looking equally like a fool: Roy Mustang, Jean Havoc, and Rebecca Catalina. Perhaps one day Riza thought maybe Edward Elric would join that company too, but it was still too early to tell. The boy had time to save his good looks and become a properly handsome man.

Roy, feeling rather proud of himself and totally unaware of Riza’s inner monologue about how utterly hopeless he was, placed both his palms against Riza’s front door. He bracketed her in his arms, she could turn her face and kiss his bicep if she felt like it, and then stepped into her precious, precious bubble of personal space. Alternatively known as: That Space That Roy Can’t Breach Because I Like His Cologne and Sometimes Daydream About Pressing My Lips to His Throat in a Situation Much Like This One.

“In the morning, Lieutenant?” He said. The hall lights flickered as if bothered by Roy’s little show. He got impossibly closer to her, his chest almost on hers.

“We drew lines years ago, sir. It isn’t my fault if you’re wanting to cross them now.” As she spoke, Roy brushed his lips over hers. Riza took in a shaky breath and Roy breathed out for her, moving ever closer, deflating into her. One treacherous hand of his lifted off the door and came to rest on the juncture where her neck met her shoulder. He teased the skin there, dragging his lips over it. It was all very dizzying.

“Colonel—”

“Mm-hm,” he hummed. And then his lips hovered hers again, and then he dove in for a kiss, but he pulled away before their lips met, leaving her open and abandoned. She reveled in her newly-restored private space and sanity, and prided herself on her self-control, but lamented the loss of him. “Enjoy your evening, Lieutenant Hawkeye. And don’t forget those reports.”

Riza had the files clutched painfully in a fist at her side, her body wound in anticipation of something that she knew better than to expect would come. At least he’d given her something more to work with.

“Next time,” she said, watching him descend the stairs, “call me before you come by, sir.”

**Author's Note:**

> this was meant to be smut but i can't tell y'all how bored i get writing smut i get so BORED i'm sorry. i like to think i'm good at writing kissy times tho so equivalent exchange, i guess. anyway, please leave kudos and comments! i subsist off them


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